The drainage canal at Rabalder Park in Roskilde, Denmark, is probably the coolest drainage canal on the planet. OK, so maybe it doesn’t have much competition, but the new development — part rainwater drainage system, part recreational skatepark — is an ingenious approach to solving the anticipated problem of increased rains brought about by climate change.

The design, which is a finalist for an Index Award, began as a standard drainage project from Roskilde’s sewage department. Over the past few years, climate change has increased rainfall, leaving basements and streets flooded. The city needed to devise a way to separate rain and sewage water from the adjacent areas. They could’ve just constructed underground pipelines or a basic concrete water canal to take care of the problem, but instead they brought in Dutch architecture firm Nordarch to transform a potential public infrastructure eyesore into a multi-functional recreation area. Led by Søren Nordal Enevoldsen, a skateboarding-obsessed architect who has designed skateparks throughout the country, the Rabalder Park project has become a gathering place for both rainwater and skateboarding enthusiasts. ...

The skatepark is part of a larger design project called MUSICON, an effort that will transform the old factories around Rablader Park into housing, office space, artist studios and a museum. The park itself will also boast a jogging path, fitness and play equipment, hammocks and general hanging-out spots. But what happens to the skatepark when it rains? Nothing to worry about there, Enevoldsen says, since the design accounts for “worst case rain scenario.”

“The Canal itself empties rather quickly when the rain stops, and the particular water reservoir where the skatepark is placed, will only be filled approximately once every 10 years,” he explains. “That means the rain will almost never have an impact on the skatepark use.”

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

What if the solution to smog was right where the rubber meets the road?

Scientists in the Netherlands have found that installing special air-purifying pavement on city streets can cut air pollution nearly in half.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology outfitted one block in the city of Hengelo, Netherlands, with paving blocks sprayed with titanium oxide, which has the ability to remove pollutants from the air and turn them into less harmful chemicals. The researchers left normal pavement on an adjacent street as a control.

After taking measurements for a year, the scientists found that the street outfitted with smog-eating paving blocks, also called photocatalytic pavement, reduced nitrogen oxide air pollution by up to 45% in ideal weather conditions and 19% over the course of a day.

Nitrogen oxides -- also known as NOx -- are a group of poisonous gases produced by cars and power plants that react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form smog.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

Here, in his company’s hometown, Mr. Bezos has put his chips on the idea of Seattle and urban America itself. The first headquarters tower is already under construction, and the company currently occupies 14 smaller buildings nearby.

The result in South Lake Union, previously a low-rise, low-rent warehouse district with ties to the city’s gritty maritime past, is a flood of cash, construction detours and dust. Increases to the city’s tax base aside, some people are apprehensive about whether the growth could outstrip the city’s ability to keep up. ...

The once-empty streets are flooded at lunchtime with Amazon workers, easily identified by their blue employee badges. Fleets of food trucks have arrived, offering Thai, tacos and other fare. On a nice day, workers take their lunches to a park next to the Museum of History and Industry, which was recently renovated with a $10 million contribution from Mr. Bezos. ...

The setting is significant. In casting its lot in the center of a congested, bustling city, Amazon has rejected the old model of the suburban company campus that is typical of Silicon Valley and the technology ring road around Boston. The old way is perhaps most vividly exemplified by Microsoft. Its offices, and most of its 42,000 local employees, are about 18 miles from downtown Seattle, in the suburb of Redmond. ...

Amazon’s transformative rush presents challenges for Seattle. Officials must manage the de facto city-within-a-city that is emerging around the company, with a surge of new restaurants, apartment complexes and commercial buildings.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

How The Power Of Ocean Waves Could Yield Freshwater With Zero Carbon Emissions

A new project in Australia aims to create freshwater by harnessing the kinetic force of ocean waves, RenewEconomy reports. Run by the Perth-based firm Carnegie Wave Energy in cooperation with the Water Corporation, and supported by a $1.27 million grant from the Australian Federal Government’s AusIndustry Clean Technology Innovation Program, the plant will use Carnegie’s proprietary CETO wave energy technology to power reverse osmosis desalination. The resulting process, free of carbon emissions, “will be a world first” according to CEO Michael Ottaviano.

Reverse osmosis desalination has been in use for several decades, and works simply enough: high pressure is used to force saltwater through a membrane, producing drinkable freshwater on the other end. Traditionally the pressure is provided with electric pumps powered by fossil fuels, resulting in both carbon dioxide emissions and lots of points for energy loss.

But instead of relying on those electric pumps, Carnegie is using the latest iteration of its CETO technology — CETO 5 — to supply that pressure with wave energy instead. Underwater buoys eleven meters in diameter are installed offshore, and as ocean waves catch them, the movement supplies hydraulic power to pump seawater up underground pipes to shore. At that point, the water runs into the desalination plant, where it directly supplies the pressure for the reverse osmosis. Some of that hydraulic energy is also converted into electric power as needed.

The resulting system not only cuts out all carbon dioxide emissions, it also greatly reduces the points where energy can be lost, making the process much more energy efficient and cost-effective.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

The SF-Oakland Bay Bridge had a section fall down in the '89 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The bridge has two parts...a western span on the SF side of Treasure Island and an eastern span on the Oakland/Berkeley/East Bay side of the island. The eastern span has been replaced and is scheduled to open next Tuesday at 5:00 am or before if Caltrans says it's ready. In the meantime, the bridge is closed for the whole Labor Day weekend. The new bridge span is quite lovely and there will be bicycle and pedestrian paths.Webcam of the finishing work that is being done:[/break1]go.com/kgo/story?section=resources/traffic&id=9226016]http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sectio ... id=9226016Images and information here:[/break1]mtc.ca.gov/planning/bay_bridge/]http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/bay_brid ... t_Span.jpg

[link]Wired,http://www.wired.com/design/2013/06/inn ... eid-152739[/link]That's my hometown (ok, I don't live there at the moment, but it's where I grew up and it's where I want to move back to at some point).About time they get started on the Musicon area, they were talking about it some 10 years ago and only really getting around to actually building stuff now.

At 90 miles above the Arctic Circle, the small outpost of Kiruna, Sweden, may seem like an odd choice for a new, billion-dollar model city. But Sweden's northernmost town, with a population today of just 18,000, is facing what planners from the Stockholm-based architecture firm White have obliquely called "unprecedented pressure for transformation."

That's a nice way of saying that the ground beneath Kiruna is collapsing, quickly. The city's current downtown was built during the mining boom of the post-war era, as the state-owned mining company, Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, brought jobs and investment to the region. But in the past decade, LKAB — now the largest iron mine in the world — has begun to dig deeper, unsettling the ground beneath the current town center.

So the entire downtown is picking up and moving two miles east. This includes the city hall, several thousand residences, the train station and the century-old church, once voted Sweden's most beautiful public building.

But how do you go about moving a city's entire center of gravity? The answer, in short, is gradually, and expensively. ...

Plans for the new central plaza include the sleek town hall and several sustainable design initiatives, including a new cable car system. The architects see this as a chance to create a higher-density "Model City 2.0," anchored by the city hall, a train station, and a central plaza. Though most of the revamped downtown will consist largely of new construction, the plan also includes the physical relocation of about a dozen historic buildings. The move of the old wooden church will mark the final stage of the decades-long transformation. The current town center will eventually be turned into a nature park, which town leaders hope will help reinvigorate tourism.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

After nearly five years of planning, a large-scale attempt to turn a big chunk of Detroit into an urban forest is now underway. The purchase of more than 1,500 vacant city-owned lots on the city's lower east side – a total of more than 140 acres – got final approval from Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder last week.

The buyer is Hantz Farms, and it's a venture of financier John Hantz, who lives in the nearby Indian Village neighborhood. Indian Village is an affluent enclave of manor-scale historic homes, but much of the surrounding area is blighted. Hantz Farms will pay more than $500,000 for the land, which consists of non-contiguous parcels in an area where occupied homes are increasingly surrounding by abandoned properties.

The company has committed to clearing 50 derelict structures, cleaning up the garbage dumped across the neighborhood, planting 15,000 trees, and mowing regularly. Planting of the hardwoods will begin in earnest next fall, and the urban forest will be called Hantz Woodlands.

The huge deal drew criticism last year, when the city council – which was then still in control of Detroit – voted 5-4 to approve the sale. A coalition of grassroots urban farmers and community activists opposed it, charging that it was a play to increase land values by buying a huge swath of acreage and taking it off the market. "I think it opens the gateway for other rich folks to come here to buy up land and essentially make themselves rich compounds," urban gardener Kate Devlin told The Huffington Post at the time. ...

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

OFF THE COAST OF FUKUSHIMA, Japan — Twelve miles out to sea from the severely damaged and leaking nuclear reactors at Fukushima, a giant floating wind turbine signals the start of Japan’s most ambitious bet yet on clean energy.

The project’s turbines, and even the substation and electrical transformer equipment, float on giant platforms anchored to the seabed.

When this 350-foot-tall windmill is switched on next month, it will generate enough electricity to power 1,700 homes. Unremarkable, perhaps, but consider the goal of this offshore project: to generate over 1 gigawatt of electricity from 140 wind turbines by 2020. That is equivalent to the power generated by a nuclear reactor.

The project’s backers say that offshore windmills could be a breakthrough for this energy-poor nation. They would enable Japan to use a resource it possesses in abundance: its coastline, which is longer than that of the United States. With an exclusive economic zone — an area up to 200 miles from its shores where Japan has first dibs on any resources — that ranks it among the world’s top 10 largest maritime countries, Japan has millions of square miles to position windmills.

The project is also a bid to seize the initiative in an industry expected to double over the next five years to a global capacity of 536 gigawatts, according to the industry trade group Global Wind Energy Council. The Japanese have lagged at wind turbine manufacturing, which is dominated by European and Chinese makers.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

This is a most interesting article. Having been forced to visit Detroit over the last 30 years, I can attest to that City looking like Beirut after the war. The same burned out buildings, that go on for blocks and blocks, have been there since the 1967 riots. It is the most depressing place I've ever been.

We were there last year for a wedding. There are a few blocks that are "nice", and one can see from some of the remaining architecture what a beautiful city Detroit once was.

I read the comments to this article, and saw the expected complaints about the 1 percenters, and why isn't Hantz planting fruit trees, etc. I just think it's a positive when anybody is willing to put any money into this City. Hantz will be paying badly needed taxes on the land. It will remove horrible urban blight and replace it with trees! People have been hoping for some form of gentrification for decades. I understand that there is a small movement of folks planting urban farms, but it's not enough to rebuild the City. I think it's pretty outrageous that the Governor has taken over the City government and installed a private manager, and that needs to be watched carefully. But even Mayor Dave Bing wanted to cut some of the blighted areas from the City's boundaries in order to save providing City services to the one remaining home on a street of 20 abandoned homes. Something has to be done to revive this City. I'm not saying this is the ideal solution, but given that it's not gotten better over 40 years, at least this is a start.

The organ from this church can be heard at around 48:00 minutes on the first our of this Pipedreams episode (after the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony).[/break1]publicradio.org/listings/2010/1052/]http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2010/1052/48 minutes is around the introduction for the piece which gives some information about how the use of the organ on this is rather different than what might be expected. In some ways, it is an different and innovative use of the instrument (architecture and the other arts always seem to walk hand in hand).

North-land: of the family 10
UCC 1-106 Plural is Singular, Singular is Plural.

I know almost nothing about organs, so I cannot explain the dramatic difference between the organ at St.-Sulpice and the organ at Kiruna. Is it simply a difference between the two forms of music, symphony and Swedish folk songs? The one at St.-Sulpice thunders, while the one at Kiruna sings.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

I know almost nothing about organs, so I cannot explain the dramatic difference between the organ at St.-Sulpice and the organ at Kiruna. Is it simply a difference between the two forms of music, symphony and Swedish folk songs? The one at St.-Sulpice thunders, while the one at Kiruna sings.The difference is the style of piece more than the instrument. French organs such as the one at St.-Sulpice do tend to be rather assertively voiced, in comparison, but I suspect the instrument at Kiruna can be played rather strongly, depending on the music. I happen to find it interesting that the first recorded composition I found for this instrument was, generally, a different style then what one might expect for an organ.

North-land: of the family 10
UCC 1-106 Plural is Singular, Singular is Plural.

... I happen to find it interesting that the first recorded composition I found for this instrument was, generally, a different style then what one might expect for an organ.I would love to find other recordings of this style of music with the Kiruna organ.I wonder how much of the tonal quality of the Kiruna organ is attributable to the fact that the church is wood, not stone.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

A Modern Flood Barrier Aims to Protect Verizon’s Landmark Building ...

Passers-by have been startled this week by the sight of a nine-foot-high wall standing in front of the company’s switching center at 140 West Street, across Vesey Street from 1 World Trade Center. This wall was intended to defend against floodwaters. Segments of it were being tested. Made of steel posts and aluminum planks, the removable barrier would look like a heavy-duty storefront security shutter about 1,000 feet long if it were completely installed.

But it has not been designed to win aesthetic awards. It has been designed to protect Verizon equipment, electronics, cables and conduits from inundation. Four of the five subbasements at 140 West Street were immersed during Hurricane Sandy. Tanks storing fuel for the emergency generators were submerged. ...

Most of the year, there will be almost no evidence of the wall except for footings that will be flush with the sidewalk. If the city’s Office of Emergency Management says that a distant storm may have destructive potential, Verizon will pull the barrier out of storage in South Plainfield, N.J. The numbered parts are to be kept in four big containers, one for each side of the building, on West, Barclay, Washington and Vesey Streets.

Over two or three days, the company will install the steel framework around the building. This consists of vertical steel posts and 45-degree steel braces. The posts will be bolted into the permanent footings and braced against the building by steel plates faced in rubber.

The wall will have 49 bays. In every bay, a dozen horizontal aluminum planks, each nine inches high, can be stacked up to form a solid barrier. The planks vary in length from 15 to 27 feet. They are notched top and bottom to nest in one another. The bottom of each plank is lined in a rubber gasket to create a virtually watertight seal.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

A European consortium has developed a robot that can scan tunnel walls for tell-tale signs of impending trouble.

Called Robinspect (a bit of a tortured abbreviation for ROBotic System with Intelligent Vision and Control for Tunnel Structural INSPECTion and Evaluation), the tunnel-scanning robot sits at the end of a truck-mounted crane and searches for cracks, gaps, and fissures. ...

But Robinspect isn’t just fast — it’s also quite thorough. Human eyes just aren’t good enough to catch all the cracks and fissures that may pose danger in a tunnel, but robot eyes see everything. Robinspect is designed to analyze surface defects, measure defects and the distance between cracks, and detect open joints.

A prototype is due to go into service at the end of 2014 in the tunnels of the London Underground, the underground portions of Greece’s Egnatia Highway, and some test tunnels in Switzerland. It’s also expected that the robot will do final trials on the tunnels of Madrid’s M-30 highway.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

... I happen to find it interesting that the first recorded composition I found for this instrument was, generally, a different style then what one might expect for an organ.I would love to find other recordings of this style of music with the Kiruna organ.I wonder how much of the tonal quality of the Kiruna organ is attributable to the fact that the church is wood, not stone.Ack, I should have remembered that question, as I might have been able to get an answer. Our local cathedral (which is also my parish church) recently borrowed an organ for its crypt, so one of the two organists had a small function on friday, where he gave a brief outline of the history of organ music in Denmark and played a large variety of music on the new organ (which was my main excuse for going, I love organ music). Oh well, I'll have to see if I can catch either of them (we have two organists) and ask if wood/stone has a major effect.

... Oh well, I'll have to see if I can catch either of them (we have two organists) and ask if wood/stone has a major effect.Thanks. I'm still interested. I followed with great interest the saga of the 1986 renovation of Carnegie Hall and the layer of concrete suspected to be under the stage. The sound did change when the warping stage boards were removed, the concrete layer destroyed, and the (likely) design of 1891 restored. The stage was integral to the sound of Carnegie Hall.

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” Kurt Vonnegut

AGUASCALIENTES, Mexico — Jessica Lopez, a four-year old with a shy smile, has suffered severe chronic asthma attacks since she was born. Her condition always worsened in the fall, when dust rose up from the abandoned fields that bordered her family’s modest one-room house.

Last year, city officials here turned those dusty fields near Jessica’s house into a gleaming park with trails, playgrounds and shaded pavilions. Then in the fall, something remarkable happened in the Lopez home: Jessica’s asthma attacks did not come. It's impossible to say that the park is what turned Jessica's health around. But her mother has no doubts. The park, Maria del Refugio Lopez insists, saved Jessica's life.

Jessica's story is one of many good things happening along a sliver of land that cuts through a crowded corner of this city of 1.3 million people. Those fields outside Jessica's house, strewn with garbage and a haven for criminals, followed the narrow path of an underground oil pipeline that traverses one impoverished neighborhood after another. In the past three years, the city has reclaimed almost all of this passage for the 300,000 people who live near it. The result is a 7.5 mile linear park that is one of Latin America’s most extraordinary urban green spaces: La Línea Verde — The Green Line.

The park's lush lawns march up and down the small hills of this arid city, kept green with reclaimed water from a nearby treatment plant. Solar-powered lamps light up the walkways at night. And in the afternoons, when children come home from school, the park is typically busy with families out walking, biking, exercising or just gathering in the park’s many social spaces.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

In a city whose sewers attract tourists, it’s no surprise that a mayoral candidate is proposing to turn abandoned subway stations into art galleries, nightclubs, restaurants, and pools.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a center-right candidate for mayor of Paris and former environment minister, has unveiled a series of plans to turn the legendary “ghost stations” of the Paris Metro into underground oases.

She’s enlisted the help of architects Manal Rachdi of OXO Associates and Nicolas Laisné to create renderings of the stations, repurposed as sleek spaces to display art, open restaurants, or create parks. ...

Reopening the stations has become politically popular in the days since Kosciusko-Morizet made her plans public—perhaps more popular than the candidate herself. While she currently trails in the polls, The Week reports that the stations may be repurposed regardless of who wins the election.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver

Born out of a collaboration between Romolo Stanco from design firm T°RED and energy research institution Ricerca Sistema Energetico, e-QBO is autonomous and off-grid, but integrated into the city through the services it provides. Installed on top of a wood and steel structure, custom-designed solar panels soak up sunlight during the day and store energy in battery packs of up to 90 kWh. The e-QBO can then power services like video-mapping installations, charging ports for mobile devices and electric vehicles, and WiFi. Customizable LED lights also offer public lighting.

The unit's design theoretically allows it to adapt to all sorts of urban conditions and needs. The base PV panels are 1 x 1 meter, but can easily be built up to cubes that are 3 x 3 meter, 6 x 6 meter, and so on. This means the e-QBO can just sit there like a power-generating rock or scale up to become an inhabitable space—a lounge, pop-up shop, or visitor information center, for example. ...

At last month's World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, e-QBO generated a lot of attention since its portability could be particularly useful for desert regions.

The city of Piacenza, 60 km. southeast of Milan, has already placed an order. Marson says the city wants to use it as an information hub, in anticipation of Expo 2015. There’s interest in setting up e-QBOs in African villages, too, where the solar cubes could serve as small-scale clinics or schools capable of powering computers, cell-phone charging, and lighting after dark. The firm is also working with a tourist resort in Lebanon to develop a much larger version of e-QBO, with an internal space in the range of 200 sq.m.

"The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for." - Barbara Kingsolver